


Keriah

by cobblepologist



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Canon Jewish Character, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Deathfic, Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst, Hurt No Comfort, Loss, M/M, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Self-Harm, big sad im sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-31
Updated: 2018-07-31
Packaged: 2019-06-15 09:00:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15409533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cobblepologist/pseuds/cobblepologist
Summary: There's a mangled body on top of a car. Beige plaid interrupted by red. He has always worn black, because he has always been a mourner.Zsasz grieves.





	Keriah

Jerome dies again.

Maybe Victor doesn't know a lot about Jesus, but he knows he's supposed to come again. Maybe that's how it is for messiahs. Two strikes only. Maybe Jeremiah is his second coming. It doesn't matter to him now.

There's a mangled body on top of a car. Beige plaid interrupted by red. He has always worn black, because he has always been a mourner.

"Did you know him?"

He stays quiet. Jim Gordon looks upon him with the gaze of a lost man. Victor has nothing to tell him, nothing that could talk louder than silence, so he stands there, watching for a time. He half-expects Jerome to get up and walk away. When he is satisfied, he grabs for the knife at his waistband. Then he approaches.

Alarm raised. "You can't do this, this is a crime scene-"

"Save it, Jim." He says, head turning subtly back. Not enough to look at him. People like Jim want reward. Victor gives him no such satisfaction, no word of kindness for cleaning up the streets. "You saw him die." He gives him guilt. Once there is calm, he gets to work.

Smoothes the knife down the hem. He rends Jerome's coat and he rends his own. All his mutilations. Black and plaid.

He leaves the piece of his coat in Jerome's hand, closes his fingers around it. Jerome is smiling, but Victor is not. He runs his own fingers over the plaid. There's only one drop of blood, but a pound of flesh.

While he stands at his side for the last time, he does not think about the last time Jerome was breathing, close to his side. He does not imagine Jerome sitting up, arms outstretched, saying, "Thanks for the present, Zsaszy!" He doesn't wish for him to just get up and walk away, out of Gotham. Anywhere but here. To a town that gave him love.

He does none of that.

Instead, he fixes his eyes on this corpse. Stares at the scarring on his cheek, bleached white and wrinkled. Weathered by time and resolve. Angered skin.

He tightens his jaw and walks away. Jim Gordon is talking to another man now.

* * *

"Is your brother that important?"

It is hard to get Jerome alone, with his maniacs and cultists and horribles. But there is something about the challenge, something to the reward. Jerome stretches out across him with an exaggerated hum, licking his torn lips. "Not particularly," he snarls, a half-laugh, "but family's important."

Zsasz raises an eyebrow, allows Jerome to once again reposition himself, curl up against his side. Arm tightening across his waist. "You know what I mean. You have a family. You have a Bubbeh."

"I keep my work life separate."

Jerome smirks. My, what big teeth. "Yeah, but I mix business and pleasure. It'll be a pleasure to see him again, and it's my business to drive him bonkers."

Zsasz exhales, brings him closer and softer. "You already drive me bonkers."

"Yeah, but that's my pleasure."

* * *

If Jerome believed in hellfire, he didn't tell him. A man like that believed in nothing but himself. Zsasz had never asked about his first death. Some say you get two. But Victor knows his name won't be forgotten, so he won't get three.

(He hates that phrase, hates when people say it to him. They don't know what it means for him. He remembers being a child and his Rabbi saying that a second death is only for the evil. Who else has died twice?)

No. He chooses to believe in resurrection. He's seen it before.

Jerome believed in real fire, and blood. The second night of the griefweek he stays awake, remembering Jerome curled up against his side, whispering nonsense to him. Secrets about teeth and pain and twinkling. It hurt to hear, like a ringing in his ears, but he hears it anyway.

He cuts a mark for Jerome. Not a tally. He didn't make the kill, he's not responsible. (He's responsible. It was him. He could've saved him. Did apostles feel this guilt?) The shape of a star, right on his arm. Burning with light. Five lines for everything that's been taken from him, everything he's taken from others. He swears he can see his figure in the night sky.

(Sit for seven days and let the wound heal.)

Jerome liked the night. He liked the stars and carnival lights and every shining thing he could find. The taste sours. He thinks about his mouth, the slit across it. He could fit all the weariness of a madman in that mouth.

He does what he has always done. He cleans his guns. But it's quiet now, no cackling or clanging. It feels severe, air thick like blood, dripping with weight. At night, he recites the Kaddish Yatom to a congregation of knives. The word means "orphan," and he puts it away, hides it with Jerome's things, with his clothes and his smiles.

By the fifth night, he's given up on that. Victor is not a believer. He believed in nothing but Jerome, and his words, and his violence. Now he's faithless, in a city that eats faith. The only religion is vice and misery.

The new scab on his wrist itches in the same way he did.

By the seventh night, he's making plans. Tomorrow will be his first contract in a week. He prepares. He calls Headhunter. The man goes silent at some point, and Victor knows he's saying "sorry" in his own language, but he has always been a mourner. Now is the time to be a professional, hand down the barrel of a rifle, shiny and black like the velvet inside of a coffin.

The next morning is the first new day, and he feels the pressure dissipate. He puts on his boots, he grabs his phone, his gun, his keys. Shiva ends and he's cold again, marblemade. Death and him had been sitting on opposite sides of the table, perhaps, but they've shaken hands and he's given Victor another job.

But before he goes, he ties the scrap of Jerome's coat around his wrist. Plaid under black.

**Author's Note:**

> zsasz is jewish and no one can take that from me......... even if they took jerome from him
> 
> no one else ships this but i looove it


End file.
